ACADEMIC BOYCOTT: IN SUPPORT OF PARIS VI by Tanya Reinhart 7:27am Thu Jan 30 '03 In April 2002, following the Israel's "operation" in Jenin, first calls for institutional academic boycott of Israeli universities appeared in England and in France.In the university Paris VI the board meeting on Monday January 27, 2003, reconfirmed the resolution with an overwhelming majority. A similar resolution was subsequently approved by two other French universities in Grenoble and in Montpellier. Below is my expression of support, to appear (in French) in Le Monde. print article January 29, 2003 To appear in Le Monde ACADEMIC BOYCOTT: IN SUPPORT OF PARIS VI Tanya Reinhart In April 2002, following the Israel's "operation" in Jenin, first calls for institutional academic boycott of Israeli universities appeared in England and in France. The British petition called to freeze European Union contracts with Israeli university as long as Israel continues its present policy. What started as the individual voice of concerned academics, has become lately a formal resolution of a French university. The Administrative council (board of Governors) of the prestigious Marie Curie university - Paris VI issued in its meeting of December 16, 2002 the following resolution: "The Israeli occupation of territories in the West Bank and Gaza renders it impossible for our Palestinian colleagues in higher education to teach or pursue their research: the renewal of the European Union-Israel Association Agreement, in particular as regards research (6th Framework Program for Community RTD) is a form of support for the current political policies of the State of Israel and would contravene Article 2 of this agreement (relationships between the parties, as well as all the stipulations of this agreement, which are based on the observance of human rights and democratic principles guiding their domestic and foreign policies and which are a key feature of this agreement)" (Paris VI university press relase) This decision raised an enormous storm in France. Bodies ranging from the Jewish Lobby, to conservative parties all came up with the standard anti-Semitism accusations. "Several hundred protesters, including the philosophers Bernard Henri-L?vy and Alain Finkielkraut, a leading Paris politician, the Nazi-hunting lawyer Arno Klarsfeld and Roger Cukier, the president of the Jewish umbrella organisa tion CRIF, waved banners and chanted slogans outside the campus entrance" (Guardian Jan 7, 2003). Threats of potential consequences and budgetary cuts if the university does not retract its decision came from official governmental sources. Under this pressure a second discussion of the resolution was scheduled for this week. But Paris VI did sustain the pressure. In the board meeting on Monday January 27, 2003, the previous resolution was reconfirmed with an overwhelming majority. A similar resolution was subsequently approved by two other French universities in Grenoble and in Montpellier. Below is my expression of support, to appear (in French) in Le Monde. * It is not easy for an Israeli academic to support the calls for boycott of Israeli academic institutions these days. Like any other segment of the Israeli society, the universities are paying the price of Israel's war against the Palestinians, with severe budget cuts and deteriorating research conditions. A freeze of the EU funds would, no doubt, make things even tougher. It is therefore understandable that the Israeli academia is mobilizing its forces to attack any such boycott attempt. Understandable, but not just. Most of the Israeli academics, just like their colleagues in France, supported the boycott of apartheid South Africa, which contributed to the end of apartheid. This means that they recognize boycott as a legitimate means for the international community to enforce a change, when serious breaches of moral and civil principles occur. The question, then, is whether the analogy between Israel and South Africa's apartheid is correct. I believe that even much before its present atrocities, Israel has followed the South-African Apartheid model. Behind the smokescreen of the Oslo "Peace process", Israel has been pushing the Palestinians in the occupied territories into smaller and smaller isolated enclaves-- a direct copy of the Bantustans model. Unlike South Africa, however, Israel has managed so far to sell its policy as a big compromise for peace. Aided by a battalion of cooperating 'peace-camp' intellectuals, they managed to convince the world that it is possible to establish a Palestinians state without land-reserves, without water, without a glimpse of a chance of economic independence, in isolated ghettos surrounded by fences, settlements, bypass roads and Israeli army posts -- a virtual state which serves one purpose: separation (Apartheid). But what Israel is doing under Sharon far exceeds the crimes of the South Africa's white regime. It has been taking the form of systematic ethnic cleansing, which South Africa never attempted. Since April last year (following the Jenin "operation") we are witnessing the daily invisible killing of the sick and wounded being deprived of medical care, the weak who cannot survive in the new poverty conditions, and those who are bound to reach starvation. Since the US is backing Israel, and the European governments are silent, it is the moral right and duty of the people of the world to do whatever they can on their own to stop Israel and save the Palestinians. In fact, a boycott on Israeli institutions, economy and society is already taking place and growing: consumers boycott, tourism boycott, divestment movement in the US campuses, and cultural boycott. As in the case of South Africa, academic boycott is just one specific realization, yet it drew most fire, and the question which underlies the debate around this is whether there is something special about the Israeli academia that exempts it from the ongoing general boycott, e.g. something that distinguishes it sharply from the white academia of South Africa at the time? The traditional spirit of the academia is that intellectual responsibility includes the safeguarding of moral principles. What could help to exempt the Israeli academia would be some institutional record of such safeguarding. But there is none. Never in its history did the senate of any Israeli university pass a resolution protesting the frequent closure of Palestinian universities, let alone voice protest over the devastation sowed there during the last uprising. It is not that a motion in that direction failed to gather a majority, there was no such motion anywhere in the Israeli academia. Even the closure of Al Quds university in Jerusalem last July left the Israeli academia unmoved. If in extreme situations of violations of human rights and moral principles, the academia refuses to criticize and take a side, it collaborates with the oppressing system. At the individual level, there are pockets of resistance and opposition in the Israeli academia, as anywhere else in the Israeli society. Indeed, close to four hundred (out of the tens of thousands of) Israeli academics signed a petition supporting conscientious draft objectors. But the individual intentions are not what is under consideration here, because the boycott is institutional. (I do not support individual boycott, like stopping overseas collaborations with individual Israeli scholars.) The Israeli academia, as a whole, is not different than the white academia of South Africa. In both places there were also dissidents. It is sometimes a trait of intellectuals that they can choose the option of dissent. But the dissidents do not represent the academia; they are not dissidents thanks to the mainstream academia, but rather despite of it. Some of the real dissidents of the Israeli academia are being constantly harassed, publicly or behind the screens, by university authorities. If one needs more indication of how detached the Israeli academia is from the perception of the apartheid reality, one can read the arguments of the Israeli opponents of the boycott. Thus, Jerusalem professor Idan Segev urges the intellectual community opposing the occupation to help in "constructing an open dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian universities". Rather than boycotting, the EU should "help us organize an international scientific congress in one of the universities of the West Bank" (Liberation, Jan 7, 2003). Though the Jerusalem campus is about 15 minutes drive from the prisons of the West Bank, Prof Segev appears to have no idea about what is happening in these prisons. He never heard that the Palestinian academic life is on the verge of paralysis, that the towns and village are isolated and locked, that there is curfew most of the time. It is in this pastoral setting that he believes a scientific conference will promote dialogue. The first step in promoting dialogue would be to remove Israeli tanks from the gates of Palestinian universities. ========== Tanya Reinhart is a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, and among the Israeli signers on the British boycott petition. She is the author of 'Detruire La Palestine - ou comment terminer la guerre de 1948', La Fabrique 2002; Israel/Palestine- How to end the war of 1948, Seven Stories, NY, 2002. http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart add your comments Source file

BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL OPPOSES ‘ACADEMIC BOY by Kalman Rushdie 11:27am Thu Jan 30 '03 print comment BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL OPPOSES ‘ACADEMIC BOYCOTTג€™ OF ISRAEL The British Medical Journal, an internationally respected journal of science and medicine, has officially declared its opposition to the “academic boycott” against Israel that has been upheld by many European academic institutions. "We start the new year with strong opposition to an academic boycott of Israeli scientists," wrote editor-in-chief Dr. Richard Smith in the “Editorג€™s Corner” column of the Jan. 4 issue. "The BMJ deplores these actions and does not support any sort of boycott. “Our position is based primarily on support for the 'universality of science, ' which is enshrined in the International Council of Scientific Unions and explicitly rules out boycotts on the basis of citizenship, gender, religion, or color," Smith wrote. Smith added that a boycott would only be plausible if Israeli academics were debasing science, as Nazis scientists did during the Second World War. "Nothing similar has happened in Israel,” Smith wrote. “In contrast, groups like Israeli Physicians for Human Rights, which includes Jews and Palestinians, are working hard to draw attention to suffering on both sides of the tragic conflict." The European academic boycott is directed at Israeli academic institutions as a form of political pressure on the Israeli government. However, zealots such as British linguistics professor Mona Baker have abused the boycottג€™s emphasis on institutions rather than individuals, firing two Israelis employed at her linguistics journals purely on the basis of their Israeli nationality. Other academic journals have also refused to publish Israeli papers in the name of the academic boycott. add your comments

Radical Treason by genesio 6:26am Tue Feb 4 '03 print comment Radicals Sans Rigueur By Genesio Zenone FrontPageMagazine.com | February 4, 2003 Journalist and author, Christopher Hitchens was invited to Berkeley to give a talk at the Mario Savio lecture series. Hitchens is a pleasure to watch because he is consistently witty, provocative, and intelligent. His erudition and logical prowess make up a rhetorical arsenal that few can match. Arguing with him can be like stubbing your toe on the entire western canon. Lately, there has been another reason to watch him. He is almost always visited upon by radical lefties that show up for the express purpose of antagonizing in the only manner their wherewithal will allow. They are confrontational, inarticulate, and generally obnoxious. Many radicals in the crowd were hostile, angry that someone they view as a traitor could be associated with Savio. They were relatively quiet in the beginning, when Hitchens was discussing his campaign against Kissinger, but when the topic of war against terrorism and against Saddam came up, an avalanche of boos ensued (they sounded like moos). He was repeatedly interrupted with expletives like "BULLSH-T!" He retorted that the agitators were advertising their wares. Known for not letting anyone get away with anything, he arrived, as usual, ready for an intellectual brawl; instead he got in some target practice. The Q&A; period was pathetic. That it took place at Berkley is a testament to an intellectual decline at the hands of leftist ideology (had I suddenly been teleported to a high school full of misty-eyed indoctrinates?). There were perhaps two decent questions in the entire period. Some among the left state that the reason for why they dislike Hitchens is that he is boorish. They should be reminded that there was a time when the left said of him: "he's a boor but he's our boor!" He really only humiliates people who think they are more clever then they are and whose swollen egos beg for it. It is really unclear what position Savio would have taken after the world changed. 9-11 acts as a litmus test for the left; it separates those who advocate self-criticism as a responsibility and who are willing to look beyond a stale paradigm for new ideas, from those who are unable to amend or renounce a model of the world that has served them for a lifetime. The differentiating question asks whether or not oneג€™s world view is dynamic. Is each encounter with historical phenomena going to result in lucid, honest and vigorous deliberation? Or will an eventג€™s ontological status be tampered with (even unknowingly) so that every phenomenon fits into a pre-existing paradigm? It is clear that Hitchens disagreed very little with Savio's ideas about the U.S. position in the Vietnam War. Perhaps Savio might have shared Hitchens' ability to distinguish between, for example, deposing Allende and removing the Taliban. This ability seems to have been removed from, or worn down in, the minds of so many in todayג€™s anti-war left. Itג€™s not that those of us who can make the distinction between one act of aggression and another (and who and reject trite moral equivalences) are pro-war; we simply acknowledge that war (or the threat of war) is sometimes a necessary evil, a lesser evil. Whatג€™s interesting is that most of the antiwar left would agree with that proposition; they believe (in principle) that there are some things worth fighting for. Of course, some are antiwar because they are strict pacifists; killing, for them, is never justified. While I am filled with both empathy and disgust for their idealism and naivetי, genuine pacifists exist as a very small group; it will be a long time before Quakers start affecting public policy. But most people who were and are against the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq are either ignorant or hypocritical, or both (they are not mutually exclusive adjectives). Either they do not know that, for instance, the "Not In Our Name" and "International ANSWER" antiwar movements are fronts for the world workers party (the same group that defended Milosovichג€™s right to slaughter Muslims) or they do know. Those who do not know are guilty of the sort of lazy posturing that is all too common among those who strike the subversive pose. Those who do know are acting in bad faith, demonstrating anti-Americanism rather then a desire for peace or human rights. The left's hypocrisy is evidenced by more then a half century of consistent anti-Americanism. Nothing the US ever did was right: Leftist have stood against: The War Against Nazism; The Korean War; The Vietnam War; The first War in Afghanistan; The Wars in Central America; The first Gulf war; The War Against the genocide of the European Muslim population; The War against the Taliban; the war against terrorism; The Bush Administration's plan remove Hussein from Iraq…. Now, I am against some of these wars and have reservations about others. But the left not only opposes or opposed all of them, it has found ways to sympathize or actively support each enemy. The inability to make moral distinctions and the insistence on condemning the U.S. is explicitly demonstrated by the anti-war protesters last weekend. Their signs show no degree of originality or sophistication: "BLOOD AND OIL DONג€™T MIX" or "BUSH IS EVIL" or "STOP AMERICAN IMPERIALISM, GOD BLESS NORTH KOREA, IRAQ and AFGHANISTAN." How can anyone who demands rigor take this seriously? If Bush is "evil," then what term could we use for regimes that torture and kill dissidents or for leaders like Kim Jong Il, who has reduced the population in his dystopia to starvation or for Saddam Hussein, who gasses his opponents and murders his "friends"? Do those who throw acid in the faces of women simply demonstrate a different kind of "evil"? It this the position of the new New Left? The Taliban has been removed from Afghanistan, and, while there is a long way to go, there is no comparison between life under Taliban rule and life now. All that which the left foresaw (the "silent genocide," the rush to build the pipeline…) has not happened. In fact, aid organizations are readjusting their projections of how many dead because aid is flowing much more freely. Many among the left cannot see that a wholly new situation has risen. They insist on translating this fresh, challenging information back into the familiar language they already know, of empire, and oil. What is noticed more than anything else is the overwhelming monolithic and predictable character of their position; everyone strikes the same subversive pose. Nowhere in this group can be found the philosophical calm, the objectivity and the intellectual self-monitoring that one would expect from a well-educated elite. And the sycophantic followers are worse! Their ideological miasma is a confused, haphazard, bitches-brew of platitudes, clichיs and nonsense spewing in all directions. add your comments

Leftists For Bombing Iraq back to the Stone by mitch 6:30am Wed Feb 5 '03 print comment A Leftist's Case for War By Mitchell Cohen Dissent Magazine | February 3, 2003 Is Baghdad simply another miserable regime? Just one of those unpleasant tyrannies that, sadly, speckles our globe, but ought not to compel overbearing concern? Much depends on how one answers this question. The answer, I think, is no. Saddam Hussein's dictatorship is pathological and distinct from other rotten regimes today, including those rooted in a similar ideology (Syria, for example). It is not just a matter of this regime's fascist-like character (call it fascism-plus), although its ruling Ba'ath Party fused Pan-Arabism to the worst ideas of early twentieth-century Europe. It is not just Baghdad's brutality, although it is difficult to imagine a more vicious, vengeful regime. It is not just a question of Saddam's totalitarian aspirations at home and aggressive ambitions abroad, although Iraq's citizens and neighbors know firsthand that these aspirations and ambitions are beyond question. It is not even a matter of Iraq's dogged pursuit of weapons of mass destruction-although this is clearly Saddam's fixation, and he has demonstrated his readiness to use them against citizens and neighbors (and would be pleased to do likewise against Americans). No, it is not "just" these things. It is their combination with the fact that this regime never keeps agreements. Virtually every major accord Saddam has reached with domestic or foreign foes-usually under pressures produced by his recklessness-lasts only until he recovers sufficiently to pursue his purposes. Ask Iranians. Ask Kuwaitis. Ask Iraqi communists. Ask Iraqi Shiites. Ask Iraqi Kurds. Recall the UN inspections. So I conclude, reluctantly, that the options are not "war or peace," but "sooner or later." Unless there is a coup, force will eventually be needed to defang Saddam's regime. The only real questions are when, how much force, and what aftermath. Some people will, undoubtedly, protest: how can you support the Bush administration? I worry a great deal about the Bush administration-about the fact that it has not thought out adequately what happens after a war, about its cynical exploitation of the Iraq crisis to pursue its dreadful domestic agenda, about its unconstructive unilateralist instincts, displayed in matters like Kyoto and the International Criminal Court. But I urge people on the left to judge the Iraqi danger independently both of distrust of Bush and of third-worldist prejudices. Sooner or later? "Sooner" will be costly, dicey, scary. Wars always are, which is why every sensible means ought always to be used to prevent them. "Sensible" is the key word, however, and it is perilous and not sensible to invent choices that are comfortable to you, and then to choose between them. So although I think that arguments against preemptive war are formidable, and although I share many of their assumptions, I don't think that they are always persuasive. "Kantianism has pure hands, but it has no hands," warned Charles Péguy, the French essayist, a century ago. "Later" will allow Baghdad to shore up, to expand, and to conceal further its lethal capacities. There can be no doubt that Saddam will do so. UN inspectors, who are arriving in Baghdad as I write, will, I hope, impair his efforts at concealment, but their success is likely to be temporary and partial. Inspectors were readmitted only because of an immediate American threat, not because of a Security Council resolution-even if some Western governments, intellectuals, and activists won't admit it. For Saddam, inspectors are a problem to be overcome, and he has proven staying power. Disarmed-Saddam is an oxymoron. So, I'm afraid that "later" just means rescheduling to his advantage, and the likelihood of immeasurably more suffering among Iraqis, their neighbors, and any outside forces moving against him at another date. The past inspection record is mixed. After its spring 1990 inspection of Iraq, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Baghdad's claim to be fulfilling its duties as a party to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. ("Exemplary" cooperation, said the supervisor of the Agency's safeguards division.) A year later, after the Gulf War, it was revealed that Baghdad had initiated and concealed an ambitious nuclear weapons program-between ten and fifteen billion dollars of investment in some thirty sites, in a workforce of twenty thousand, and, significantly, in the production of highly enriched uranium. And there was insurance: each important level of the program had a duplicate. The United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), established in 1991 to deprive Baghdad of its biological, chemical, and nuclear arms and longer range ballistic missiles, achieved a good deal. The problem lies in what it could not achieve because of Saddam's determination to undermine inspections. (He acceded to them in the first place only because of military defeat.) So UNSCOM verified that thirty-nine tons of VX, the deadly nerve agent, were destroyed, but it also feared that Baghdad had sequestered chemical materials sufficient to produce another two hundred tons of it. Saddam manufactured mobile germ laboratories and the like. Around a hundred and sixty bombs and two dozen Scud missiles mounted with anthrax could not be found by UNSCOM, according to its final report. Its mission ended in 1998-not because it was completed but because it was frustrated so well by Saddam's apparatus. In recent months, as the crisis intensified, some voices protested: by what right does the United States press this issue? The more important question is this: why was Baghdad willing to forgo a hundred and fifty billion dollars in oil earnings rather than disarm? In some extreme cases "right" doesn't matter. For instance, Vietnam invaded Cambodia without right, for its own purposes, in violation of international law, and installed a new regime. I'm glad it did so because it ended the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge. Other voices protest: isn't this Iraq business just a ploy by Bush? "War should not start from a bolt from the blue, but be the consequence of demonstrated Iraqi unwillingness to accept international rules," wrote Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, last summer. He is, of course, right that war ought never to originate from nowhere. But that is a banality. If Saddam has not demonstrated unwillingness to accept international rules, then unwillingness to accept international rules is indemonstrable. The UN-alas!-has demonstrated its inability to enforce them adequately. Current intelligence reports of Baghdad's accelerated efforts to produce nonconventional weapons surprise no one who has paid adequate attention to and understood Saddam's pathology and priorities. True, people don't always pay attention. Back in the late 1990s, while Saddam was freeing himself from UNSCOM (and while, elsewhere, al-Qaeda was planning attacks), our patriotic Republicans thought the nation's focus ought to be on Monica Lewinsky. Why deal with Saddam now? Because his menace, especially nuclear, will only swell. The situation was captured long ago by words attributed to Cicero: "How can you believe that a man who has lived so licentiously up to the present time will not proceed to every extreme of insolence, if he shall also secure the authority given by arms? Do not, then, wait until you have suffered some treatment and then rue it, but be on your guard before you suffer; for it is rash to allow dangers to come upon you and then to repent of it, when you might have anticipated them." I am wary of words like "anticipation" and "preemption" because they can be abused politically. They ought not to be a "doctrine." But they are appropriate in some cases, and Saddam's priorities demonstrate why he is one. His pursuit of nuclear capabilities began over two decades ago, although plentiful oil gives Iraq no need of nuclear energy. Baghdad's budget priorities after the vast carnage of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), which Saddam initiated, placed Iraq's high technology military industry over civilian reconstruction. Saddam's principal concern since UN sanctions began has been his arms and not his citizens. Sanctions permitted Iraq to sell oil to buy medicine and food, but not military goods. Yet for some time now a loud, scurrilous public campaign has claimed on the basis of a UNICEF report that sanctions helped to kill some one million Iraqis. But why, then, did Saddam rebuff UN appeals to buy baby formula in 1998-1999? Why was he exporting food? Why was he importing massive quantities of scotch for his hierarchy and building an amusement park for the Ba'ath elite? Why has he spent two billion dollars on presidential palaces since the end of the Gulf War and offered another one billion dollars in aid to the Palestinian intifada? Why did mortality rates fall in the semi-autonomous Kurdish areas, where the UN-rather than Baghdad-administers proceeds of "oil for food"? Doesn't anyone notice that the UNICEF report was written in collaboration with Saddam's Ministry of Health?* It is true that Iraqis have suffered. The reason is not the sanctions regime (which has, in fact, been quite porous). The problem is Saddam's exploitation of it. I do believe that there is a moral debt to be paid to Iraqis, but not because of sanctions. It is due because the United States encouraged Iraqis, especially the Kurds and Shiites, to rebel at the end of the Gulf War, and then stood back while Saddam slaughtered their intifada. I am not optimistic about democracy in Iraq, but this debt can be paid at least in part by support for a Saddam-free Iraq, and by making it clear that whatever the immediate post-war arrangements, post-Saddam Iraq belongs to Iraqis, not to the United States. So I will not support an antiwar movement, even if it includes many good people. I hope, for the sake of honest public debate, that those good people keep this movement focused on Iraq. Iraqi suffering ought not to be exploited by "activists" with other agendas (such as Israel/Palestine, which has nothing to do with Saddam's tyranny and must be addressed on its own, unhappy grounds). In the meantime, I will support Iraqi democrats, even if they are few in number and their prospects difficult. I am antifascist before I am antiwar. I am antifascist before I am anti-imperialist. And I am antifascist before I am anti-Bush. *I cull these points from Michael Rubin's devastating report, "Sanctions on Iraq," Middle East Review of International Affairs (online), December 2001. At various points in these comments I also draw material from the Economist, December 8, 2001, Chen Zak's Iran's Nuclear Policy and the IAEA (Washington Institute for Near East Policy Military Research Paper #3, 2002) and articles in the New York Times, September 8 and 16, 2002. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mitchell Cohen is co-editor of Dissent and professor of political theory at Baruch College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York. He is currently visiting professor at Stanford's Center for Integrative Research in the Sciences and Humanities. add your comments

Get your facts straight by Paul Tremblay 5:21am Thu Feb 6 '03 phthenry@earthlink.net print comment Your comments that the sanctions are not responsible for the deaths of over a million Iraqis is completely anti-intellectual. Before the Gulf war, the main health problem with children was obeisity. Saddam, though a brutal dictator, fed his people well. After the sanctions were imposed, roughly 5,000 children died a month. The article correctly points out that UNICEF attributes these deaths to the sanctions. However, rather than address the conclusion of this report, it goes on to make completely irrelevant claims. It states that Saddam imported Scotch, as if this can account for the deaths of one million people. The palaces that Saddam built did not cost 2 billion dollars--that is a figure derived at if you calcuate what Western workers would have earned. In the deprssed Iraqi economy, the cost was many times less. The author states that the Northern region did not suffer from sanctions, drawing the incorrect conclusion that Saddam must be abusing the program. What the author didn't state was that the explanations for this discrpenancy have been given again and again by UN experts who administer the program. 1. The Kurdish region gets more money per person. 2. Thd Kurdish region has advanced means to distribute the goods that Saddam does not have. 3. The Kurds can trade with Turkey. The author also didn't mention the words of the foremost experts on this subject, namely Dennis Halliday and Hans Von Sponeck. Both of these men were directors of the oil for food program. Both resigned in protest because they realized that this program and the sanctions was killing 5,000 children a month, as Dennis Halliday was directly quoted as saying. The author mentions that the UNICEF report was written in collobration with Saddam's ministry of health. This implies that is is propaganda, when in fact the methodology is open for anyone to see, and has not been disputed by any experts. Besides, what is the author actually doubting in the report? On the one hand, the author states Saddam is responsible for the suffering of Iraqis. But then, since the report is propaganda, they are not suffering at all! So which is it? In fact, the report--and I did read every word of it--makes no mention of blame. If it did, it would not be a scietific report but a political tract. Instead, the report shows the rates of death before and after the sanctions. The UNICEF report is backed up by other reports done indpendently and by Americans. Were these reports also influenced by Saddam? What, did Saddam place a chip in these American's behinds? Nor did the author mention the words of virtually every UN person involved with the oil for food program, that the Iraqi regime does an admirable job in distributing the food it has. The author also mentions that Saddam fails to live up to international law. It is true that Saddam has violated 13 UN security council resolutions. It is also true that Israel has violated 69. So should we bomb Israel back to the stone ages because it doesn't have any respect for international law? The author mentions that Saddam has used weapons against his own people and neighbors. True, but with the US help. So if Saddam is guilty of these horrible crimes--and he is, of course--so is Donald Rumsfield and a slew of other Americans who helped him committ them. Is this so-called leftist willing to see Rumsfield and his crew stand before the world court for war crimes? In short, this article is typical of propaganda. It exaggerates, falsifies, and omitts in order to give a false picture. I am suprised that with the mass of evidence about the effect of the UN sanctions, anyone would post such nonsense. add your comments

Leftist Racists by adrian 10:13am Wed Feb 12 '03 print comment Left-Wing Anti-Semitism on the Rise By Adrian Humphreys National Post | February 12, 2003 The true threat of "the new anti-Semitism" emanates not from right-wing nationalists, but from the Left and anti-globalization activism, a University of Toronto conference on anti-Semitism heard yesterday. "Before the [Second World War], the Right rather than the Left was the paramount source of hatred and contempt for European Jews," said Todd Endelman, a professor of modern Jewish history at the University of Michigan. "This is no longer true. On the right, anti-Semitism no longer functions as a cultural code or a rallying cry, while on the Left, it has become entangled with and draws energy from ... anti-Americanism, Third Worldism and the anti-globalization campaign," Dr. Endelman said. The two-day conference, called Anti-Semitism: The Politicization of Prejudice in the Contemporary World, brings together nearly two dozen academics to probe the roots and scope of anti-Jewish bias and hatred. Yesterday, scholars defined the differences between the old anti-Semitism that was embodied in Nazi Germany and the often more subtle manifestations seen today. Anti-Semitism is again on the rise, said Dr. Endelman. "There is more hostility to Jews in Western Europe now than there was a decade or two earlier.... Alongside the taunts of hooligans and the ravings of skinheads, expressions of overt hostility have sprouted in the liberal media." Dr. Endelman offered examples, including the New Statesman, the flagship weekly journal of the British Left, which carried the cover headline "A Kosher Conspiracy?" with artwork that would not have seemed out of place in Nazi Germany, and the Italian daily La Stampa, which carried a cartoon of an Israeli tank attacking Jesus in a manger. "In short, the bien pensant chattering classes experience no compunction, as they might once have, about deploying classic anti-Jewish tropes," he said. In recent years, a rampant anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment has emerged within the left-wing circles that besieged European Jews once sought refuge. "The role of the Palestinians in the imagination of the European left today was played previously by other progressive, freedom-loving peoples, including Cubans, the Vietnamese, the Nicaraguans and the Chinese," Dr. Endelman said. "Just as radical-minded college students once travelled to Castro's Cuba to help harvest sugar cane, so too students today rush to join Yasser Arafat in his compound in Ramallah." Steven Zipperstein, a professor of Jewish culture and history at Stanford University, said Israel is in danger of being "written off by much of the left and, perhaps, by [many] liberal opinion-makers in the Western world, as this decade's South Africa," he said, referring to international opposition to that nation's former apartheid regime. "In Europe, hundreds of academics, primarily in England, pressed the European Union to cease its dealings with Israeli academics and their institutions as a protest against Israeli policy in the occupied territories," said Dr. Zipperstein. In the United States, there is an effort to pressure universities to divest from financial holdings in Israel, echoing an activist tactic of the anti-apartheid movement. Dr. Zipperstein said the obsession with Israel's actions by these academics, anti-globalization activists and left-wing adherents stems from a "distorted and painfully simplistic" analysis -- one that craves an obvious oppressor and a clear-cut oppressed group -- but it is not, in itself, anti-Semitic. "Such prejudice against Israel, as disturbing as it is, isn't the same as anti-Semitism, although the two can, undoubtedly, co-exist and in some instances clearly do," he said. Dr. Endelman echoed that sentiment, but questioned whether "forceful criticism of Israeli policy has become the acceptable face of anti-Semitism, a respectable vehicle for venting hostility to Jews." There is a clear distinction between thoughtful disagreement with Israeli policies and anti-Semitism, he said. Dr. Endelman suggested the line is crossed when opponents: question the legitimacy of a Jewish state and Jewish nationalism, but no other state or any other nationalism; blame the Arab-Israeli conflict on Jews alone; and when there is an obsessive concern for the "sins of the Israelis and the plight of the Palestinians" while virtually ignoring other nationalist issues, occupations and human suffering. "When these lines are crossed, one has left the world of rationale foreign policy debate and plunged into a cesspool of fantasy, obsession, fear and irrationality," Dr. Endelman said. As if to illustrate the speakers' themes, posters promoting an anti-war march were pasted on utility poles around the university. They feature a large portrait of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevera and promote speakers from an anti-poverty group, a socialist coalition and a pro-Palestinian organization. The linking of anti-Semitism with the anti-globalization movement clearly upset one conference attendee, who said he is both Jewish and an activist who sucked in tear gas during anti-globalization protest rallies. He said many Jews support the current anti-war movement, which is "protesting against the pending holocaust in Iraq." The conference, organized by the university's Munk Centre for International Studies, continues today. add your comments

NNNN by Tanya's 7:07am Thu Feb 13 '03 print comment News Flash! Tanya Reinhardt has decided to get a female circumcision to show her solidarity with women in the Moslem World!! add your comments

Solidarity by John Veldhuis 7:37am Thu Feb 13 '03 print comment To express our solidarity, should we treat all circumcized men the way Palestinians are treated by the occupation? add your comments

The Hand by Rebbe Morkover 10:31pm Thu Feb 13 '03 print comment Jews! Get into new dimension! Do not let your rabbi put his hand on your balls. And your brains too. As to your penis, it is mutilated and if you do not understand it you are not a Jew but an American moron. Type the word circumcision on Google or GoTo and you'll get the full info about the deeds of your loving parents. IDMP is not an IndyDemoMarxistParty. IDMP is I DEFEND MY PENIS. Well we all understand it's too late. But you save the life and little worms of your children. If your wife is not a bloodthirsty New York meidele... IDMP is the fundamental slogan of Jewish uprizing against the hypnotized by dirty rabbis heroic Jewish people. The revolution can never bypass penis. Penis is the basis of every revolt. DYP is not a Do-It-Yourself Penis. It is Defend Your Penis. Be strong. add your comments

Lav ALL BOYS ALONE,, by Anti Mutilation 12:36am Fri Feb 14 '03 print comment Besides the obvious revolting practice of mutilating kids, The ritual has a pedophilia Connection too. Once the helpless baby has been violated, it is Customary for the Mutilator to Suck the blood from the babes balls,,,Yuck. add your comments

Ewoo by goali 12:42am Fri Feb 14 '03 print comment you SACRIFICE your foreskin to a lord how sick is that? add your comments

Yes I don't belive in Violence by Eric 10:24am Thu Feb 20 '03 print comment That was at least 70 lines a the conclussion is that you don't consider so-called leftwing arguments anything that should be taken seriously. Then you comment all the *just* wars that U.S has participated in. Tell me how come that the U.S haven't interferd in the occupation of TIBET if they are that justfull. I'll give you a clue which you heard before... Lack of Oil or any other resurses that the Multi-national companies with their head offices in America, can EXPLORE. THEY DON'T CARE, IF THERE IS NO MONEY IN IT. Advice,,, do some traveling and don't sleep on the fancy hotels, take the lodge or guesthouse, than dress like the main stream and learn about life, live whith the locals, why don't you go to Afganistan, quite devestated. When you done that, send a e-mail a tell me about your different experience. puurnam@icqmail.com add your comments